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May 2016

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The first weekend in May, Nate took Quincy on our church ward’s father-son campout. It was at the Circuit of the Americas racing facility, which was a unique location for it and a neat experience! Daddy and Q slept in the car and were quite comfy.

After Nate and Quincy got home on Saturday the 7th, I went to get pedicures and lunch with a few friends from church, which was an enjoyable Mother’s Day weekend activity and pre-baby treat. On Sunday the 8th (Mother’s Day), Nate stayed home from church with Maisy and her germs. (Maisy and my mom had both caught the bug that Nate and I had in the end of April.) After church, I took an afternoon nap, which is something I’d specifically requested from Nate. When I woke up, Nate surprised me with the wooden lizard that I’d been wanting ever since we moved south and I saw it at the “Texas Chainsaw Masters” place! Maisy helped Nate hide it under a blanket on the table, and she apparently wasn’t convinced that I wanted it. She said doubtingly something along the lines of, “Dad, are you sure this is going to be a good surprise for Mom? She is going to like this?” I do really like him (the lizard AND Nate)!

One of our real backyard lizards came to take a peek:

We had Mother’s Day dinner at my parents’ house that evening, almost entirely provided by the wonderful men in our lives. Everyone speculated whether the baby would be born the following weekend on my mom’s birthday, because we seem to land birthdays close together in our family. We took some votes on the baby’s name, which was mostly down to Wyatt and Jay.

The night of Monday the 9th, I made a funny note in my calendar that I tried to take a hot bath with a bath bomb that my friend Julie had given me. I thought it might help with some of the normal but ouchy pregnancy pains I was having, but the kids crashed my bath! Before I knew it, both Maisy and Quincy had stripped down and were jumping in the bath with me as I called out for Nate to come rescue me. I learned my lesson and will lock the door next time! Don’t trust this innocent looking face:

At my doctor appointment on Tuesday the 10th, I was 37 weeks pregnant, 3cm dilated and 80% effaced. The following Sunday morning (the 15th), my Braxton Hicks turned into false labor that felt more like the real thing, so we took the kids to my parents and spent the afternoon in the hospital. The contractions were consistent and strong, albeit not real painful, but they weren’t productive so the on-call doctor sent us on our way after a couple hours of monitoring. With our family’s history of rapid labor (also called precipitous labor), I was paranoid about going into active labor at home and not having enough time to make it to the hospital. Having a baby in the car is some people’s idea of a good story, but not me! That would be a nightmare for me! I had more false labor with Wyatt than the other two. Here’s Maisy playing in my Mom’s sandbox on Friday the 13th:

On Saturday the 14th, the kids wore themselves out playing in the water outside while Nate worked in the yard.

The 14th was also Mimi’s birthday:

My mom went to Utah with Kenzie and Joe from May 16th to the 21st. Since baby didn’t come before that, we wanted him to wait until afterwards. Throughout the week, we kept working, doing daily life, getting ready for the baby, and soaking up the anticipation that’s in the air right before the arrival of a new baby. Everyone had pitched in to get the yard in good shape:

Everyone but the squirrel whose only contribution was stealing and gorging himself on our bird seed!

Also in the yard, our neighbor’s vine was exploding with these firework-like flowers that attracted masses of butterflies:

We had an induction scheduled for Wednesday the 25th, and my doctor’s office asked if I’d do them a favor by coming in ridiculously early (like 4am or something) instead of at the originally scheduled reasonable time (maybe 6am?). I agreed to it but in hindsight was sort of sorry because it set me up to experience extra exhaustion the first few days. Having said that, the belly was so big by then that I would’ve agreed to a number of ridiculous things to be alone in my own body again.

After wrapping up work the evening of the 24th, we had dinner at my parents’ house, then spent the night there so the kids would already be there the next morning. Here’s Quincy on a bike ride with Mimi earlier that afternoon:

Nate and I went to the hospital early-early on the 25th to check in. After we got settled into a labor and delivery room, they got me started on IV antibiotics (since I was positive for GBS again) and fluids (before I could get an epidural).

And we waited…

I’m always happy to see the anesthesiologist. He had a real dry sense of humor, and we had some good laughs while he was in the room. I don’t remember the exact timing of everything, but I think they started the pitocin drip shortly after 8am. After an hour or so, I’d gone from 3cm to 4cm dilated. I hoped it wouldn’t take 6 more hours to get to 10cm because I really wanted to eat lunch, which for some reason Nate found rather humorous. During the next hour, the contractions got painful. I paced my breathing to get through them, and I kept clicking the button for more juice on the epidural. The nurse came in a couple of times and asked me why I was doing that, and I kept saying, “Because it hurts!” (Isn’t that obvious?) She replied with something like, “I think we should get the anesthesiologist back in here to check on your epidural, and then I’ll be back to check on your progress around 1pm.” That would’ve been in 3 more hours, even though I’d told her about my history of fast labors. Me: “Um, I think you should check me now before you go. I think things are happening down there.” So she checked, and I’d dilated from 4cm to 10cm in only an hour. Explains the pain!! I knew I’d made progress but didn’t think the baby’s head would already be in position to start pushing, so I told Nate to hurry and call my mom. It looked like she was going to miss the delivery again (same story as Quincy’s birth day).

The nurse said, “Let’s try a test push on the next contraction.” So I did and she changed her mind, “Ok, no more pushing until we get the doctor in here!” The doctor came in, and I pushed for about 30 seconds before the baby gushed out. Hello Wyatt Brian Cannon! Born May 25, 2016 at 10:36am, he was 9lbs 6oz and 21” long.

Wyatt came at 39 weeks like Quincy, who was 8lbs 4oz, and he beat Maisy’s weight by almost 5 ounces, even though she was 10 days “late.” One of the first things I remarked after Wyatt came out was, “Woah, that’s a big baby!” My mom ran into the room as they were cleaning him up, and she was mad at the nurses out at the station for not letting her through right when she got there. They told her, “You can’t go in yet because she’s in there with the doctor.” My mom exclaimed, “I know! That’s why I’m here, because my daughter is having a baby!!” Mimi was still the first family member to welcome Wyatt to the world after his mom and dad, and then Tara arrived shortly after. Such a sweet moment captured here:

Mother says, “Hmm, have I earned a snack yet?”

The family visited us in the hospital, and the kids met their new sibling. Maisy was really into Wyatt. Quincy was over the novelty after a few minutes, but he has been nothing but gentle with his baby brother since the beginning. Sometimes he shares his blankie with him and says, “I’m a nice boy.” or “He loves me!”

Maisy was worried about the bright lights bothering the baby, and she kept trying to shade his face with her hand.

At night when it was just Wyatt and me, I watched the latest season of Call the Midwife and then the first season of Poldark. My babies have never slept well in those hard plastic boxes in the hospital, so as the hours passed I got more and more tired. I don’t like hospital beds either – they hurt my butt! I really wanted to go home the next day, but Wyatt had some blood sugar issues due to his size, and they wouldn’t discharge us until he’d had a certain number of “passing” blood sugar tests in a row. What this really meant was that the nurses kept pricking poor baby’s feet until they were all dotted with needle marks, and one of the nurses insisted that I just park him on the breast. I told her I normally wouldn’t nurse more than 20 minutes on one side in the beginning, but she came back with something like, “Well, if we can’t get his blood sugar numbers up, then he’ll have to go to the NICU and get an IV.” So, I parked him on the breast and ended my hospital stay with bloody nipples. That’s probably TMI, but I try to keep it real in my record here. This time in the hospital wasn’t my best experience, but I know people were just trying to do their jobs.

Thursday the 26th was Maisy’s last day of preschool:

My friend Lyndsey brought me Chick-fil-A with a diet coke (yes please!) for breakfast on Friday the 27th, and we were discharged after Nate and Maisy came up to get us.

We met my mom and Quincy at Mama Fu’s for lunch before heading on our way home. We stopped at Babies R Us to pick up a new bedside bassinet for the baby, and I was so tired that I could barely keep my eyes open while we waited in the car. After we got home, I took a much-needed nap with Wyatt. It’s amazing what a couple hours of good sleep can do to refresh you! We hung around the house for the weekend, and the family brought dinner down on Sunday the 29th. Monday was Memorial Day, which we spent playing in the backyard.

Wyatt had a doctor appointment on Tuesday after lunch, so I dropped the kids off with my mom beforehand. When we left the hospital on Friday, Wyatt weighed 8lbs 14oz. At our Tuesday doctor appointment, he was back up to 9lbs 3oz, almost to his birth weight. So, while the excessive nursing in the hospital had left me in a lot of pain, it had expedited my milk and baby boy was already benefitting. After the appointment, I went next door to the office to let everyone see Wyatt and to spend a few hours catching back up on my emails. And so we 4 became a family of 5! I couldn’t get enough snuggles with our yummy newborn. I really do love brand new babies.